Disk imaging is a critical information technology tool for many enterprises. Disk imaging can refer to the process of replicating the information on a source disk, resulting in the creation of a disk image. By creating and deploying a disk image, which may be a computer file that typically contains the data and structure of the source disk, network managers may avoid the timely task of individually configuring every computer in a network. Disk imaging may greatly simply network maintenance, software deployment, software migration, disaster recovery, and many other network management tasks.
Network managers often use disk imaging to deploy and update operating systems and other software on multiple computers. For example, a network manager may want to install and configure a new version of an operating system on twenty computers. Without using a disk imaging tool, a network manager may need to individually setup the operating system on each of the computers. This can be a long, tedious process. In contrast, the network manager may install the operating system on a source computer and configure the source computer as desired. Then, the network manager can create an image of the source computer and deploy the image to the other nineteen computers (known as destination computers). Typically, the configuration of each of the nineteen destination computers will be the same as the configuration of the source computer. Ideally, the network manager saves time by eliminating the need to configure each of the nineteen destination computers.
But we do not live in an ideal world. The nineteen destination computers often include many different hardware configurations. For example, some of the destination computers may be updated with newer hardware than the source computer or other destination computers. Some destination computers may also include hardware devices not installed on any of the other destination computers. In addition, one destination computer may include a dual core processor while the others include single core processors. These hardware differences present significant challenges in deploying a disk image.
When a source computer has a different hardware configuration than a destination computer, the image may not include all the files the destination computer needs to run properly. For example, if a destination computer includes a device not found on the source computer, the image might not contain the drivers required for the device to operate. In many cases, the destination computer may not be able to boot when device drivers are missing from the image. Thus, the network manager may have to fix these hardware compatibility problems on many computers after deploying a disk image. This process may take the network manager more time than it would have taken to individually install and configure the operating system on each of the destination computers.